Soos_R

Fiio might sound a bit better, but IMO not worth the price difference. I’d recommend Moondrop or CCA if you liked KZ. Moondrop Chu sound pretty neutral and blow anything at this price point out of the water basically, and CCA CA16 are warm with less clarity, but still nice sound overall.

Your post made me think about kind of a reverse experience. One of the first games that deeply engrossed me and resonated with me was Alan Wake. I played it in my teens on a big old CRT (I believe it was like 40 inches, but a 4:3 aspect). I literally couldn’t stop, it was during summer holidays and I didn’t even open the blinds to be more immersed in the darkness. I binged through the game in about a week straight. I still consider it one of my all-time favourite games. But recently I started the remaster and just couldn’t get into it for some reason. Just didn’t click.

I am still waiting eagerly for the second game, and definitely will try again to get into the remaster. Maybe the understanding that I can’t recapture nostalgia will help me take it for what it is, not what I remember it being. Because I believe that even separate from that magical experience it’s still a good game that I will probably dig.

Wet hot American summer have me both Superbad and Napoleon Dynamite vibes. It is likewise unexpectedly heartfelt, while being satirical about anything and everything.

Resolve is actually one of the tools which has allowed me to think about daily-driving Linux. And while it’s not FOSS it still feels much more open with the support for OFX plugins. There is also Natron which is FOSS and pretty competent as a compositor. And then blender. I’m learning CG in hopes of branching out as a generalist and blender is a prime example of FOSS being competitive with closed-source, industry-standard software.

Also since ML has become a part of my working process (speech recognition mostly at this point, but also had some projects with speech generation, audio clean-up, rotoscoping and other stuff) it sometimes feels like a part of my process is already easier in Linux. I’m no programmer, so setting up all the things for ML work might be challenging and let’s just say on Windows it doesn’t feel that intuitive. Always a step missing, a dependency which is outdated or incorrect etc. Working in Linux feels more streamlined and straightforward even though I know powershell better than terminal.

Just wanted to piggyback off your comment, since I work in video-production too and feel like it’s a niche that has been very closed-up up until very recently.

Regarding Apple — their products and solutions are at times incredible tools for our work which have little to no competition. When I decided to buy a tablet I had the option to buy an android device which is basically a media consumption tool and has little to no software applicable in my line of work, or an iPad, which has a ton of useful apps in its library. I can monitor several NDI sources and put up waveforms to check the picture while working in live production, I can use at least two different editing solutions (lumafusion and resolve) to create a rough-cut of a video, I have a set of powerful tools to use for still image editing and vector graphics, I even have a tool to create storyboards with 3D assets. Oh and if I wanted to, I could create these assets on the iPad too. It is also probably the best portable display in the industry with a toggle to output rec709 (not perfectly calibrated, but good enough for most cases I’d wager). And there is pretty much none of that on Android. So of course I will choose the option which satisfies my professional needs, or more precisely professional whims, since they are not must-have, but surely belong in the “really nice to have” category.

On the other hand, I have been working on a Windows PC for the last 10 years, because Mac pricing was atrocious until M1. They were underpowered and/or overpriced so heavily. And now I’m thinking about switching to Linux at least partially, since my workflow does not involve Adobe heavily anymore. Even our industry, which has been historically so closed and focused on making people use the same tools for atrocious prices, is slowly moving towards more openness.

The main takeaway related to the topic is this — sometimes you have an option to choose based on convenience, and in that case it always pays off to do research and compare different solutions. Some FOSS solutions can be state of the art, but less known because they have less marketing. But maybe an integrated closed ecosystem saves you precious time that could be spent doing something important, and that’s fine too. Sometimes you gotta choose based on necessity or approved working process, and then it’s really not much of a choice at all. I’m not going to quit my job because I can’t use open-source tools. People don’t need to be shamed for using Apple products (or any other closed solution) if they make their lives undeniably better in some way. But it is always a good thing to be on lookout for FOSS solutions, and in time figure out if you can make the switch and be one of the straws that breaks a mega-corporation’s back.

I mainly use resolve on the personal rig (no way I’m paying Adobe subscription out of my own money), so for me it was a choice between it and speed editor. And while I still want the speed editor for a more fluid jog wheel, the granular control of Shuttle is so nice. And the ability to map it to any software is a huge boon. Won’t get rid of it even after getting the speed editor.

Actually a headless mac mini is absolutely fine as a NAS. It really is better to use what you have, than get dedicated hardware IMO. At least for your own home server, which will probably not see usage any higher than being your personal cloud for direct file sharing or a media server.

My build is a Ryzen 5900x and RTX 4090, 64 gigs of ram, 6 TB of ssd storage (of which 1 is a system drive, 1 is for cache and the 4 Tb is a main project drive), and a 2 TB hard drive for general storage purposes. The GPU is overkill for editing I think, but ML is now somewhat integrated in some of my processes, and I learn 3D as a hobby with hopes to maybe become a CG generalist, so a beefy GPU doesn’t hurt.

Then my old setup (R 1700X and RTX 2080) is acting like a home server. 18 Tb at the moment, though because I usually store projects for corporate clients for 1-2 years since they are done, and the server also acts as a home media server, the space is running out, so it’s probably time to add some drives. The OS I use is Unraid, at this point it’s too much of a hassle to setup everything again in order to migrate to TrueNAS, and I don’t really use SSDs in my server, so the benefits of going TrueNAS are minimal.

My network is just 1 gigabit, because I mainly load current projects on pc, then transfer them for storage to NAS when finished and don’t do much editing directly off of the NAS.

Monitors are consumer-grade LG panels with OK colours after calibration.

Speakers — JBL LSR305 mkII.

Headphones — Beyerdynamic DT 770 Pro. But I’ve grown accustomed to use my Sennheiser Momentum 4 for doing work where I need sound only for general monitoring, not mixing. They are lighter and don’t press on the head and ears as much, so more comfortable for long sessions (and I say that fully understanding that the 770 are probably more comfortable than 90% of headphones I tried).

Audient Evo 8 as an audio interface.

As for additional accessories — I’ve got a stream deck with some useful shortcuts and Contour Shuttle Xpress for timeline. Kensington expert trackball, because mice give me wrist pain during long editing sessions.

Also like to use iPad Pro M1 for clean feed output (rec709 mode is probably not ideal for grading, but it is probably the best display in my house, and I’m not a pro colourist) and putting up scripts or any additional info on the project. Also use Microsoft remote desktop on it to quickly do minor touch-ups from the couch. Works amazing for that.

I would suggest playing it for it’s own sake, since I liked the game. Maybe try the demo, see if it hooks you. But don’t feel obliged to play it just because you want to start the second game, you will not have a lesser experience.

I would also note that in general people tend to agree that the second game is an improvement in many ways over the first one, mechanically and in terms of storytelling. So maybe it is a safer bet to start with the second one if you are not sure, then you could always go back to the first one later if you become a fan.